Before Taco Bell was appropriating everything holy about the street taco with a whitewashed cantina chicken menu, restaurateur Luis Vasquez, a native of Honduras, and his husband, Darren Strayhorn, were selling arepas and yuca frita from a tiny food truck, converting Central Arkansans to Honduran cuisine. These days, they’ve graduated from that truck to a brick-and-mortar in Little Rock’s South Main District. Don’t get us wrong; we were perfectly content to wolf down our cauliflower chorizo on the park benches at Bernice Garden back then, but a proper restaurant table and chairs afford luxuries we didn’t even consider in El Sur’s food truck days — booze, for instance.
The Pollo Chuco and the baleadas might be the main attraction, but it’s hard to imagine a better bloody mary than El Sur’s (It scored the top spot in our 2024 Toast of the Town poll.) It’s a behemoth, stirred up with tequila, smoky house-made chipotle sauce and a dose of “Hot Mama” mix from a Little Rock-based company called Bloody Darn Good, then topped with an entire fried taquito, a lime wedge, a pair of spry baby corn shoots and a skewer of chili pepper, olive and pickled okra. Conversely, the elegant house margarita is a feat of simplicity, and possibly the key to erasing any sickly memories you might have of frozen margarita machine folly at Chili’s. El Sur’s secret: loads of fresh lime juice, simple syrup, Triple Sec from neighboring Rock Town Distillery and — though it’s deceptively smooth as silk — a full three ounces of Rancho Alegre tequila, which they’ll happily substitute for your tequila of choice.
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